Dealing with Grief Archives - Page 3 of 8

Coping with International Mother’s Day as a Childless Woman

May 6, 2020 Jody Day 1

To watch this one-hour recording, click the image above or this link Whatever stage of your life you’re at as a childless woman, Mother’s Day can be a complex one to navigate. And for my international readers, it’s coming up this Sunday 10th May. For this video chat, I invited four childless guests to explore how they cope with Mother’s Day. Each of them has a unique viewpoint and I hope this conversation begins to represent a few of the less discussed ways that Mother’s Day and childlessness can intersect… As well as discussing their stories, we also answered questions […]

Oppressed by advice… all over again!

April 4, 2020 Jody Day 13

When I think back to my days of wanting/trying to become a mother and then wanting/trying to recover from that and build a new kind of life that did not include motherhood, one of the things that eventually stopped me from discussing my situation with anyone – was advice. (For me, the fact that the last four-letter spell V.I.C.E seems very apt!) In my training to become a psychotherapist, one of the earliest things we learned (and it’s not an easy habit to break!) is to stop giving advice, either asked for or not, but instead to support our clients […]

When the title of your book becomes the same as the news… ‘Living the Life Unexpected’

March 19, 2020 Jody Day 13

Today the 2nd edition of my book, Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children is published and the incredible global blogtour of my book that’s been going on since March 1st comes to a close. And yet, celebrating that feels like a crass thing to do right now, in the opening stages of a global pandemic that will change all our lives forever… Even though we’re in the run-up to UK Mother’s Day this weekend, normally a very anxiety-provoking time for British childless women, my website and inbox are almost silent on the […]

Coping with Mother’s Day as a Childless Woman

March 17, 2020 Jody Day 3

To watch this one-hour recording, click the image above or this link Whatever stage of your life you’re at as a childless woman, Mother’s Day can be a complex one to navigate. For this one hour chat, I invited four childless guests to explore how they cope with Mother’s Day. Each of them has a unique viewpoint and I hope this conversation begins to represent a few of the less discussed ways that Mother’s Day and childlessness can intersect… As well as discussing their stories, we also answered questions from our viewers, which included some topics that perhaps you can […]

Salt Water & Honey by Lizzie Lowrie: a powerful new memoir of childlessness and faith

February 28, 2020 Jody Day 0

Lizzie Lowrie is a Christian clergyman’s wife in the UK and one of the writers behind the popular, frank and earthy Christian blog about miscarriage and involuntary childlessness, Salt Water & Honey. Although what remained of my own childhood Christianity was eviscerated by the grief of childlessness, my spirituality survived and has returned to what was there before Sunday School – a deep sense of connection to the natural world; but that was hard-won too as there was a time when even that felt denied to me, exiled as I sensed I was from the natural cycles of birth and […]

Distressed chicken looks at broken egg www.gateway-women.com

Forty, Single and Childless dammit!

February 12, 2020 Jody Day 9

From the archives: first published in October 2011, GW’s first year. I’m 55 now. Have you ever stopped to question why you want (or wanted) a baby so much? Do you find the question shocking? Taboo even? Well, I didn’t question it. And because I avoided this level of deep introspection, I failed to realise that I spent fifteen years of my life chasing a dream based partly on the premise that someone or something would make me feel fulfilled, content, satisfied, real, right, good… I thought a baby, a family, a home, what Zorba the Greek calls ‘the full catastrophe’ – […]

‘Meet the Author’ discussion with Jackie Shannon Hollis, author of ‘This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story’

November 11, 2019 Jody Day 4

A recording of a one-hour Gateway Women book club webinar, hosted by Jody Day, author and founder of Gateway Women, interviewing Jackie Shannon Hollis, author of This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story, published in September 2019 and for which I wrote the Foreword. Jackie’s wonderful book (hey, who’s going to argue with Cheryl Strayed?!) is available as a paperback, an e-book and is also available as an audio-book via Audible. Do order it now. And of course, you’ll need to read Jackie’s novel/memoir, for which I wrote the Foreword. It’s available as a paperback, e-book and audiobook Jody Day’s FOREWORD to […]

World Childless Week 2019 starts tomorrow – here are 40 free on/offline things you can join in with!

September 15, 2019 Jody Day 0

As you may already know, I’m a World Childless Week ‘Champion’ which means I support the campaign and do I all can behind the scenes to make it a success. And it’s that time of year again (no, not that time of the year!) – the 3rd World Childless Week is next week and there are so many wonderful free events happening on/offline around the world for you to take part in. If some of the links to things on the Gateway Women website are slow to be open, please be patient, they will open – we’re upgrading our server […]

Father’s Day for the Non-Father: a guest blog by Sheridan Voysey

June 14, 2019 Jody Day 1

This is a guest blog by Sheridan Voysey for Gateway Women. Sheridan and his wife are childless not by choice. You can read more about him at the bottom of this article or www.sheridanvoysey.com Thank you so much Sheridan – I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with us. Hugs, Jody x As Sheridan Voysey writes: Not long ago I took part in a segment for a television breakfast show. As the cameraman and I drove to the filming location, he told me a story. “Last night some mates and I were in the pub,” he […]

The Full Stop Podcast: a fabulous new show for childless women and men has just launched.

June 10, 2019 Jody Day 0

I’m excited to be the first guest on this exciting new podcast created for the childless not by choice community by two women and one man: Berenice Smith (UK): artist, geek and graphic designer and founder of the award-winning Walk in Our Shoes site Michael Hughes (AUS): one half of the Married and Childless blog from Australia Sarah Lawrence (UK): founder of After the Storm website and community. This first episode is themed around the issue of ‘Speaking Out’ and the first half of it features candid conversations between the 3 presenters on issues that all of us have probably […]

Are you fed up with the political rhetoric of #HardWorkingFamilies and the social trope of #AsAMother?

May 6, 2019 Jody Day 3

Come and join me and three other women without children who will be speaking at an evening seminar in Harrogate (North UK) on Monday 13 May devoted to exploring the issues of childlessness and its absence from political rhetoric and policy planning. Tickets are only £6.35 and if you need somewhere to stay, we can find a local WEP or GW members who’d be happy to help out! Click here to book This is not a ‘political’ evening (I know that everyone in the UK is utterly fed up of ‘politics’!) but rather it’s an open discussion about the experience […]

Celebrating the childless on Mother’s Day

March 31, 2019 Jody Day 26

Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK – our version of ‘Mother’s Day’ and I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the childless. Yes, today isn’t meant to be ‘our day’, but it could have been, and so today we honour the children that live only in our hearts. Maybe that sounds ghoulish, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve made friends with my ghosts now and they live in a tender, wistful part of my heart – so much so that when I see a child dancing whilst her father looks down lovingly upon her, my shadow daughter […]

Book Cover: Following Sea by Lauren Carter

‘Following Sea’ by Lauren Carter: childlessness and family history weave together in this tender and rugged new collection of poems.

March 8, 2019 Jody Day 2

As I know from my own experience and that of many of the Gateway Women I’ve worked with, creative writing can be an incredibly powerful way to help us come to terms with the completely unacceptable reality of our loss; a loss that, furthermore, because our grief is ‘disenfranchised’, is not recognised, tolerated or understood by society. Many of us have been told that we need to ‘get over’ not being mothers and that children aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. These will often be the same people who will then spend the next twenty years gushing about their […]

Childlessness after hysterectomy: “I am still a woman, hear me roar!” by Sarah Lawrence

February 9, 2019 Jody Day 9

I’m sitting here ruminating on how to talk about how grieving childlessness morphs after a hysterectomy in a way that is engaging… I’ve always loved a challenge, but even so! I guess the first thing would be to tell you my story, so you have some idea about why I know about this topic because it’s not something that usually gets talked about, is it? My dreams of having a family were, abruptly, ended during a 10-minute consultation in 2014. In a very blunt manner, I was told that I had stage four endometriosis and, that as a consequence, I […]

Would you swim the Channel to understand if motherhood makes you happy?

January 19, 2019 Jody Day 3

Jessica Hepburn is an extraordinary woman. I mean, properly extraordinary. Not only is she the veteran of eleven rounds of unsuccessful IVF but she’s also one of a very small group of people who’ve successfully swum the English Channel – that deceptively narrow stretch of water, just 21 miles across – that separates England from France. And she’s doesn’t even like exercise! These two things are intimately and surprisingly connected, as Jessica explains in this short, moving and funny interview she gave to me in 2018 just before the publication of her book, 21 Miles: Swimming in Search of the […]

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